Young Florida Gators players dealing with speed of offense

Although nearly every offensive player on the Florida Gators praised and exalted Kurt Roper’s new scheme during media day Aug. 3, the younger members of the squad still have much to learn with 18 days until the season kicks off.

“I just left a place that I was there six years,” Roper said after practice Tuesday. “So they had a great understanding of who we were offensively. So it was easy to walk in a room and say, ‘Hey, let’s do this,’ or ‘Let’s do this.’ And these guys aren’t there yet because they been in it … 25, 26 practices. So the biggest thing to guard against is putting too much on their plate.”

Two of those young Gators attempting to grasp Roper’s spread are freshmen Will Grier and Treon Harris – each vying to become Jeff Driskel’s backup at quarterback. Although redshirt sophomore Skyler Mornhinweg is the only scholarship quarterback with collegiate starting experience other than Driskel, Grier and Harris are still in contention for the backup role.

“I see talent,” Roper said. “I see guys that are working hard, that want to be good, that right now are confused because it is a bunch on their plate. It is a different game. It’s a brand new language. We do have a lot of routes, so it takes a little bit of time to pick up. But I see talented players.”

Roper added that the inexperienced players such as Grier and Harris aren’t used to playing at the speed of the collegiate level so the fall camp has been a good introductory challenge.

With Roper trying to speed up an offense that ranked last in the country in terms of number of snaps per minute (2.16), according to CFB Matrix, the freshmen aren’t the only players trying to adjust to a new tempo.

“We’re going to call plays that are really fast, that are around the 25, 28, 30-second range,” Roper said. “We’re going to call some plays that are around the 5-second range. What we try to keep tabs of is that 18-second range. If we can get the ball snapped around 18 seconds on the play clock, then we’re keeping a pretty good tempo.

“But my biggest thing is execution. I never really talked in number of plays or how fast we’re going. We’re going to be a no-huddle, quick-tempo team. At the end of the day, we want to look up and have points on the scoreboard. Typically that’s meant more plays in the past by going no-huddle. But we don’t just sit here and say, ‘Hey, let’s go get 92 plays.’ We’ve got to execute. If we can score in two plays, let’s get off and let the other team run 10 plays and punt. That’s kind of the thought process.”